In This Life
by LonelyHeart101
Summary: Formerly some separate and very short one-shots on Robin leaving for the Holy Land. Now joined together in one place.
1. Crocodile Tears

**Disclaimer:**I don't own Robin Hood or any of his Merry Men (or Women) either – I am just using them for my own entertainment.

**Crocodile Tears**

Of course he couldn't tell her to her face. He knows she will never forgive him and he knows that he's a coward of the worst kind, hiding behind a noble cause instead of having the guts to admit that the idea of being with her scares him more than anything.

...More than fighting...

...More than dying...

_She crumples the letter and tosses it to the floor, trying to hide her violently shaking hands and wishing to God that she had never met him…_

He won't ever get to feel her heartbeat against his again…the delicious warmth of her small body, the feeling of security in knowing that she is his world and he is hers.

…_She shudders. No – that's not true. She wants to wish she had never met him, but deep down she knows that she can't just wish away someone who has entwined himself so much into her heart that he's now as much a part of her as she is herself._

…She's probably better off without him… As the thought crosses his mind he feels physically sick and misses her more than ever. With a bitter smile it briefly crosses his mind that he'll have to get used to missing her now. He'll have to get used to missing her because it will never be the same again and nothing will be like it was before.

_As much as it would make her life easier to paint herself as the helpless victim of betrayal by a man, she can't. To call herself a victim seems more of a failing on her part than a fault of his. And, of course, all of this is his fault. Blaming him is easier somehow; it makes it easier for her to hate him. _

He pictures her as a girl, wild dark hair blowing in the breeze and fiery eyes daring him to contradict her.

_She hates his retreating back almost as much as she hates herself for giving away her heart so easily. _

He thinks for a brief moment that maybe he should be crying but he can't force any tears out of his dull, half-dead already eyes. Tears would be an insult to her and a lot more self pitying than he's willing to be right now.

…_He didn't love her enough…_

…_It wasn't meant to be…_

…_She won't let herself cry because he doesn't deserve her tears…_

* * *

I'm planning a series of one shots with different takes on Robin leaving Marion to go to the Holy Land, this being the first of them 

Hope the alternate pov's makes some vague sense, and please review after you've read!


	2. Lioness' Wrath

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Robin Hood or any of his Merry Men (or Women) either – I am just using them for my own entertainment.

**Lioness's Wrath**

A lioness will always protect the ones she loves…

…But even Marion couldn't protect someone who had chosen to place himself directly in the firing line…

She can't quite believe he has the gall to tell her face to face, but then she remembers that this is Robin Hood and gall is his middle name…

"What do you want me to say Marion?" His calm, measured question hits her like a slap in the face. It seems to shock her out of her reverie and she realises with a start that she has absolutely no idea. Both of their stubborn natures have reared their stubborn heads and there is nowhere left for them to go.

And it is because of her stubborn nature that she answers all the same:

"I want you to tell me that you never loved me."

The words fall from her lips slowly and deliberately, twisting a cold blade into his aorta, desperate to hurt him as much as he is hurting her right now.

He seems visibly shaken by her words. "Marion, you know I can't do that."

It occurs to her now that maybe he only came to see her to stave off his own guilt and for that she resents him all the more

"Get out," she whispers, trying the words out for size at first, the way they feel around her tongue feeling strange, alien somehow.

"Marion –"

"Get out."

"Wait for me..?" His question is more in hope than any real expectation and he can't say he blames her. The ring hits him square in the middle of his forehead and he can't help but be grateful it wasn't a right hook instead.

She catches his arm as he turns to leave, gripping him not as a lover but as a stranger and she murmurs softly but firmly: "Robin of Locksley, you are nothing to me."

… If she says it enough she knows that one day she can convince herself that it's true.

* * *

…He saw his future reflected in her eyes and it scared him… 

…He wanted to tell her but the words stuck in his throat…

* * *

Kind of short, but please review 


	3. To Whom It May Concern

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the Merry Men, Women, or Relatives of Men or Women

Hope this will be enough to tide over anyone following this for the next seven days as during that time I will be computerless. Am planning more chapters though, Chapter 4 provisionally called **Fractured Lullaby** and in Edward's pov. Stick with me, please read and review this, and I will hopefully be back soon...!

**To Whom It May Concern**

To whom it may concern,

It's been only a month and yet I can't believe you are gone … But then again you are Robin of Locksley and where glory goes you follow, everyone else falling by the wayside. Too harsh, my love? Well to be perfectly honest I don't care.

What did you think would happen if you had told me? Would the world have shattered into a million pieces? Would it have shattered the way my heart has now? I think not. Nothing on this earth can hurt as much as knowing that the man you loved with all your heart just woke up one day and simply vanished into thin air, leaving you with all too fleeting memories and an empty space in your heart where he used to be…

You asked me to spend the rest of my life with you, but isn't it ironic somehow that we will end up spending our lives apart….

We were always a dysfunctional couple at best, and at worst incompatible and I suppose that this is simply fate's way of letting us know that we were never meant to be. I can't be who you want me to and the sooner we accept that we will both be happy. I am not dutiful or malleable or anything else that would make you a good wife.

Know that I want you to be happy…

Maybe it doesn't seem like that right now because I know that this will tear you apart. Don't think I don't know that this will break your heart as much as mine … Even as I write this letter it feels as though I am signing half my soul away, consigning myself to half a life…half the joy and half the happiness, yet somehow double the sorrow.

I write to you in such impersonal terms because from now on impersonal is all we can be… all I want us to be. Perhaps we are just two similar people who simply want so very different things.

Yours no more,

Lady Marion Fitzwalter of Knighton

* * *

_He reads the letter with a strange sense of foreboding, as if their souls are so intertwined that he sees the end before she spell it out. _

_He can't see his future at all without her in it so he stops looking ahead…_

_Instead he looks over his shoulder hoping to catch a glimpse of what he left behind._


	4. Fractured Lullaby

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the Merry Men, Women, or Relatives of said Men or Women

**Fractured Lullaby**

He used to sing to her when she was a child: a few brief snatches of half-forgotten melody from when he himself was a boy. She would stare up at him adoringly; raven dark hair fanning out over her pillow creating a halo … like an angel.

His little angel…

But now his angel was weeping endless diamond tears and Edward was floundering –

His wife would have known what to do. His darling dead wife would have known exactly how to comfort their Marion, how to pick up the jagged pieces of her broken heart and how to show her how to put them back together again – the same yet different … changed somehow.

Edward wasn't sure he knew how to do anything anymore.

He hated the invisible barrier that had taken root between him and his Marion. It was a dark, insidious weed creeping its way slowly between them, suffocating everything in its path and obscuring his daughter from view.

Marion barely left her room now, immersed in her own sorrows and crying over an all-or-nothing man who didn't know how to balance love for country and love for her.

* * *

Robin came to see him three days before he left for the Holy Land….

He was being pulled in two opposing directions and had ground to a halt in the middle.

Was it wrong that Edward gave him somewhere to turn?

"_Robin of Locksley you are a man of honour and men of honour fight. I will take care of Marion and she will be waiting when you return."_

Edward remembered those words as if he had uttered them just yesterday and he repeated them silently to himself every time he began to resent Marion for shutting herself off from the world. The only person in this whole sorry mess who deserved resentment was him.

He would learn to be a good father somehow and he would learn to make up for the mess he had brought to the door of an angel…

In Edward's eyes guilt was a misplaced and ill-intentioned emotion...

But in this case misjudgement had turned out to be near fatal.

* * *

Please and review! 


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